


Hunger

by unravels (Holly)



Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-28
Updated: 2010-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 09:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holly/pseuds/unravels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War and Famine: a fluffy, romantic drabble with a warning for violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dopplegl](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dopplegl).



> A little fic for dopplegl's birthday in 2006.

He doesn't actually get to see her much, but that's all right. In that slippery dimension known as the tangible world, he sees her all the time. She is the primal, internal force, and he the pressure of circumstance that drives it. Together, they are the long siege, the stolen knife, the scrabbling over the last morsel. Day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.

*

He meets her this afternoon outside a factory. Smoke rises in thick, black billows from old stacks and the sound of raised voices and screams has faded into a ringingly false peace. She comes out with her hands red.

"I wondered if I had you to thank for this," he says.

She smiles sweetly with a hot, orange undercurrent.

"No need to thank me, unless you want to owe me one later."

"White will have a field day."

She tilts her head and paints a red stripe on his cheek with one finger.

"Are you really that concerned with what White's up to?"

"Why?" He smiles, and the last of the factory's labored gears grind to a halt. "Jealous?"

She gives him an admonishing look, and another finger trails slick across his mouth. He tastes the strangely metallic flavor and draws back, making a face. She watches, always gratified when she provokes a reaction, then smears the red stain further over his lips.

"You know, drag might actually suit you without the beard," she says thoughtfully.

The face mutates into a frown, and she can't contain her laughter any longer. You could say the sound is like gunfire or clanging swords, and you would be right, in a sense. But he hears in the abstract: ruthlessness and violence and a reckless frenzy of death. It's a fierce pleasure. He loves it when she laughs.

"Don't look so scandalized," she tells him. "Let me clean it up for you."

"I really don't know why I let you get away with this," he sighs.

"Yes, you do," she says, and leans in.

*

She flirts with everyone, it seems, though it would be more accurate to say that everyone flirts with Red. He watches them get caught up one by one in the excitement of her, testing their bravado until things carry just that bit too far. He enjoys the unpleasant knot of jealousy that forms in the cavity where a stomach would be. It's a kind of craving that he doesn't have to create for himself because she _knows_, and more than that, she _is_. And obviously, she always comes back. After all, it's not possible to get serious with someone who doesn't live long enough to learn your name.

"Where have you been?" she asks at their next encounter, emerging from a storm of gunfire with her hair wild and her eyes wilder.

"I've been here, of course." He's immobile, nearly invisible on the edge of the explosions' light. "And I might ask where _you've_ been," he adds, with a pointed look at the hungry grins of the soldiers. Smitten, every one of them.

"Lighting fools the way," she replies, laughing, and holds up a glass of dark wine in a toast.

That laugh again. For once, this time, he indulges.


End file.
